NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. May 03, 2019

U.S. Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr to Visit Ukraine Ukrinform, May 1, 2019 https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/2691816-us-special-envoy-to-combat-antisemitism-elan-carr-to-visit- ukraine.html

May 1-15, United States Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr will travel to Israel and European countries, including Ukraine.

The U.S. Department of State said this in its statement released on April 30.

From May 1-5, Special Envoy Carr will be a member of the U.S. delegation attending the International March for the Living, held in Poland and Israel. The March for the Living is an annual event to educate participants on the history of the Holocaust and the roots of prejudice, intolerance, and hatred.

Special Envoy Carr will travel to Kyiv (Ukraine) to address the Kyiv Jewish Forum on May 6. He will also meet with Ukrainian government officials and Jewish community representatives.

From May 7-9, Elan Carr will travel to Warsaw, Poland and Budapest, Hungary, where he will meet with government officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and Jewish community leaders.

On May 12, Special Envoy Carr will travel to Belgium. In Brussels, he will meet with Belgian government officials, local NGOs, and Jewish community leaders.

Belarus Building Site Yields the Bones of 1,214 Holocaust Victims By Andrew Higgins The New York Times, April 27, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/world/europe/belarus-holocaust-mass-grave.html

Tatyana Lakhay, a cheerful fitness instructor in the Belarus city of Brest, returned to her apartment after a morning exercise class when she glanced out a window and came face to face with the horrors of the Holocaust.

“My God! What is going on? Something is obviously not right,” Ms. Lakhay, 26, recalled thinking as she watched a ghoulish spectacle unfold on the building site below.

Instead of the construction workers who for weeks had been preparing the foundations for a new luxury apartment project, soldiers in masks and gloves were pulling human skeletons from the earth. So many bones were coming out of the ground, she said, it was immediately clear this was no ordinary crime scene.

Seeking to calm the furor, Mayor Alexandr Rogachuk of Brest told local journalists last month that the city, the scene of ferocious fighting in both world wars and earlier conflicts, had been built atop the unmarked graves of countless unknown war victims.

“Everyone here is a sinner in this respect,” he said. “We are all walking on bodies,” While it was known that the building site might contain “a few dozen” bodies, the mayor said, “nobody expected such a large number.” Jews made up about half Brest’s population of around 60,000 in 1941, and were thought to have been killed mostly in a secluded forest 70 miles east. They had been taken there by rail in an early test of logistics for Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

Evgeny Rosenblat, a historian who has studied the murder of the city’s Jews during World War II, said it had long been known that the Nazis also carried out massacres in the center of Brest. Still, he said, he was surprised by the large number of remains found on the building site. Just how and when those people died are not known, as few witnesses survived.

Most of the remains on the site, Mr. Rosenblat said, were probably of Jews who had initially managed to hide or flee but were then captured after the Nazi’s destroyed Brest’s Jewish ghetto in October 1942. He said at least two other sites in the city might also contain many bodies.

By the time the Soviet army reconquered Brest in 1944, only a handful of Jews remained. One of them was Menachem Begin, a future Israeli prime minister, who had survived because he was arrested by Stalin’s secret police before the Nazi invasion and sent to a Soviet prison camp. None of the few hundred Jews living in Brest today lived there before the war.

As well as stirring horrific historical memories, the mass grave on the building site for an luxury housing development has ignited a very contemporary debate about corruption, abuse of power and lingering anti- Semitism in a country that has been ruled for 25 years by the same iron-fisted leader, President Alexander Lukashenko.

Regina Simonenko, the leader of a local Jewish group called Brisk, the old Yiddish name of Brest, complained that municipal authorities should never have issued a building permit for the site and are now rushing to bury the uncovered bones without a proper investigation of whose remains they are and what other bodies might lie nearby.

Local officials, Ms. Simonenko said, were focused on celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of Brest’s founding and wanted to keep the discovery of the mass grave quiet. They acknowledged it, she said, only after Ms. Lakhay and others began posting videos on social media of the site piled with bones.

Alla Konduk, a local official, denied any desire to hide what had been found, saying that a special forensic military unit had been called in on Jan. 17, immediately after construction workers told city authorities about the remains.

Ms. Konduk said that the foundations of the planned project would not touch the mass grave and that construction, halted since January, would soon resume.

This has infuriated Irina Lavrovskaya, an architect and a preservation campaigner. She started an online petition demanding that construction on the site be halted completely and that it be fenced off and turned into a “memorial park” for Jews murdered by the Nazis.

She also appealed to Belarus’s prosecutor general to investigate whether rules governing construction in historic areas had been violated. An Italian company had originally planned to develop the site but dropped out. A murky and little known Belarus company, Pribuzhsky Kvartal, took over the project.

The prosecutor sent a letter to Ms. Lavrovskaya this month saying that the construction contract had now been canceled so there was no need to investigate any irregularities.

Ms. Lavrovskaya said it was obvious from the start that the site might contain bones, recalling how, as a young girl in the 1950s, she had lived in the area and seen human remains being removed from an earlier construction site adjacent to the recently uncovered mass grave. “There was a terrible smell in the whole neighborhood,” she said. “It was so awful it was impossible to hide.” Unlike in neighboring Lithuania and Ukraine, where locals often welcomed the Nazis as liberators from Moscow’s rule and sometimes joined in the murder of Jews, the people of Belarus rarely collaborated in Hitler’s slaughter and have little to be ashamed of.

Yet, as the most Soviet of the countries that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus has clung to the view of Stalin and his successors that Jews were just one of many groups of Soviet citizens killed by the Nazis and do not deserve special recognition.

“They are anti-Semites by inertia,” Ms. Lavrovskaya said.

A Soviet-era memorial at Bronnaya Gora, the forest killing field east of Brest, pays tribute to “50,000 Soviet citizens and citizens of other countries” slaughtered there by the Nazis but does not mention that nearly all were Jews. A second monument in the forest refers to “citizens of Jewish nationality from the Soviet Union” who were killed.

Brest officials do not deny the suffering of Jews, but bristle at demands they recognize the Holocaust’s unique nature.

“Why do they demand separate memorials? said Ms. Konduk. “All victims are equal.”

Ms. Konduk said that after discussions with Brest’s rabbi, it had been agreed that the all the bones recovered recently would be reburied on May 21 in the Jewish section of a municipal cemetery in the north of the city.

Efim Basin, a local Jewish activist, said he disagreed with calls by Ms. Simonenko and some others that reburial be put off to give time for experts to take DNA samples and build up a genetic database of those killed.

“These people are dead. Let them rest,” he said. Whether construction on the site continues, he added, is of little importance. “I would never buy an apartment in this building. But if some idiots want to live in this place that is their affair.”

As Survivors Dwindle, US Still Pursues Holocaust Restitution By Ron Kampeas JTA, May 1, 2019 https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/as-survivors-dwindle-us-still-pursues-holocaust-restitution

The number of survivors may be dwindling, but the State Department’s envoy on Holocaust issues says the issue of restitution still lingers.

Thomas Yazdgerdi, the special envoy for Holocaust issues, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday that he is preparing a report to Congress due in November that assesses what countries in Europe have done to complete their obligation to restore properties stolen during the Holocaust.

The report was mandated by a 2018 law, the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress.

Restitution can be made to communities in the absence of survivors, Yazdgerdi said.

“What do you do with property where the whole family, a Jewish family, was murdered in the Holocaust?” he asked.

“The best practice is to set up a foundation, use the proceeds of that property to help Holocaust survivors that are living in that country and use some of that money to promote and revitalize Jewish life in that country.” The same is true of synagogues and other communal properties that were stolen and remain unrestituted, he said.

The role of the United States in this issue is to encourage authorities to work with the Jewish organizations that handle restitution, Yazdgerdi said.

“The United States doesn’t get directly involved in these negotiations, it encourages governments to work with the local communities, the World Jewish Restitution Organization, with the umbrella organizations to come to some sort of resolution of these matters,” he said.

Yazdgerdi was speaking Wednesday at the State Department’s annual Holocaust remembrance event, this year commemorating the Minsk Ghetto. The event was co-hosted by the Belarus Embassy and featured an address by Oleg Kravchenko, that nation’s deputy foreign minister.

Israel Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day with Solemn Ceremony By Isabel Debre and the Associated Press Washington Post, May 1, 2019 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-marks-holocaust-remembrance-day- with-solemn-ceremony/2019/05/01/c60fcbca-6c37-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html

Israel ushered in its Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday in memory of the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in World War II, as leaders voiced concerns about a rising tide of anti-Semitism worldwide.

In moving speeches to hundreds of Israeli politicians and Holocaust survivors at the country’s national Holocaust memorial, Israel’s ceremonial president warned the government against warming up to far-right parties in Europe, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed to last weekend’s deadly synagogue shooting in San Diego as evidence of growing anti-Semitic hatred.

The 24-hour remembrance period began at sundown with the main ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, held just hours after Israeli researchers reported that violent attacks against Jews rose significantly last year. This spike, highlighted by the San Diego attack, was most dramatic in western Europe.

President Reuven Rivlin touched on the surging anti-Semitism in Europe, which he said “is once again rearing its head, fueled by waves of immigration, economic crises and disillusionment with the political establishment.”

In veiled criticism of Netanyahu, he urged the government to rethink its cultivation of alliances with nationalist parties in Europe.

“Not every right-wing party in Europe that believes in controlling immigration or in protecting its unique character is anti-Semitic or xenophobic,” Rivlin said. “But political forces where anti- Semitism and racism are part of their language, their legacy or their ideology can never be our allies.”

He added: “No interest and no consideration of realpolitik can justify a dishonorable alliance with racist groups or elements who do not acknowledge their past and their responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust.”

Rivlin did not identify any particular countries. But Netanyahu has come under fire for embracing a string of eastern European leaders who have lavished Israel with political support while promoting a distorted image of the Holocaust and stoking anti-Semitism at home. A slew of former communist nations whose leaders recently paid their respects at Yad Vashem, such as Hungary, Lithuania and Poland, are swept up in a wave of World War II-era revisionism that seeks to diminish their culpability in the Holocaust while making heroes out of anti-Soviet nationalists involved in the mass killing of Jews. Many in Israel have accused Netanyahu of cynically betraying victims’ memories for political gain.

In his remarks, Netanyahu also stressed the continued threat of anti-Semitic extremism. He said that the extreme right, extreme left and radical Islam agree on “one thing: their hatred of Jews.”

Netanyahu noted the deadly synagogue shootings in San Diego last weekend and Pittsburgh last October, as well as recurring vandalism at Jewish cemeteries. He also castigated a recent political cartoon in the New York Times’ international edition that drew ire for playing on anti-Semitic tropes, saying that hatred of Jews has even worked its way into “respected newspapers” and mainstream views.

“We’re not talking about legitimate criticism of Israel,” he said, “but of systematic, poisonous and shallow hatred.”

In an emotional ritual, six survivors lit torches in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The torchlighters’ brutal trials in concentration camps and narratives of endurance reflected this year’s theme at Yad Vashem, “The War Within the War: the Struggle of the Jews to Survive During the Holocaust.”

This year’s theme urges the public to keep alive memories of extraordinary Jewish courage and resilience during World War II -- those who risked their lives in acts of solidarity for fellow Jews, smuggled food, organized rescue missions, published underground newspapers, played Jewish music on contraband instruments and documented their suffering for posterity.

The Holocaust, in which a third of the world’s Jews were murdered, runs deep in Israeli public consciousness. The state, engendered in the wake of the genocide in 1948 as a place of refuge for Jews across the world, is filled with Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Wednesday’s event initiated one of the most melancholy holidays on the country’s calendar, observed with numerous vigils, ceremonies and gatherings.

Places of entertainment and shops shutter for the evening. TV and radio stations broadcast Holocaust documentaries and interviews with survivors until sundown the next day. The names of those who perished in the genocide are read aloud in parliament.

According to the Hebrew calendar, Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising — the most significant, yet doomed, act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust that helped shape Israel’s national psyche, symbolizing strength and the struggle for freedom in the face of annihilation.

On Thursday, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance will stop traffic. Israelis come to a two-minute standstill to remember the dead as sirens wails across the country. Pedestrians freeze in their tracks, buses halt on busy streets and cars pull over on highways to honor the legacies of those lost.

Effigy of Late Polish Jewish Communist Hung on Gallows at Former Lodz Ghetto By Cnaan Liphshiz JTA, May 1, 2019 https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/effigy-of-late-polish-jewish-communist-hung-on-gallows-at-former-lodz-ghetto

An activist who says he is working to “liberate Poland from American Jews’ occupation” unveiled an effigy in Lodz of a Jewish politician hung on a gallows.

Sławomir Dul presented the display featuring the late communist politician Jakub Berman, captioned “Jew,” outside the headquarters of the city’s police station Tuesday, Gazeta Wyborcza reported. The building stands in what used to be the Lodz Ghetto.

Dul shouted “I did it, I hung a Jew,” the report said.

Police officers documented the display without intervening immediately, according to Gazeta Wyborcza. Outraged passers-by did dismantle it, the report said.

Police told Dul to leave when the display became a cause for disturbing public order, a police spokesman said. Dul left without resisting.

On April 26, locals from a town in southern Poland re-enacted the custom of casting judgment on Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, using a life-size effigy of a stereotypical Jew with a hooked nose and sidelocks.

The incident provoked international condemnations, including from the State of Israel.

Report: Anti-Semitic Attacks Spike, Killing Highest Number of Jews in Decades Times of Israel, May 1, 2019 https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-anti-semitic-attacks-spike-killing-highest-number-of-jews-in-decades/

Tel Aviv University researchers say governments on 3 continents promoted anti-Semitism in 2018, single out officials in Venezuela, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine.

Israeli researchers reported Wednesday that violent attacks against Jews spiked significantly last year, with the largest reported number of Jews killed in anti-Semitic acts in decades, leading to an “increasing sense of emergency” among Jewish communities worldwide.

Capped by the deadly shooting that killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, assaults targeting Jews rose 13 percent in 2018, according to Tel Aviv University researchers. They recorded nearly 400 cases worldwide, with more than a quarter of the major violent cases taking place in the United States.

But the spike was most dramatic in Western Europe, where Jews have faced even greater danger and threats. In Germany, for instance, there was a 70% increase in anti-Semitic violence.

“There is an increasing sense of emergency among Jews in many countries around the world,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across the continent.

The report also found that anti-Semitism was being promoted actively by government officials in countries on three continents, singling out officials in Venezuela, Turkey, Poland and Ukraine as promoters of hatred of Jews.

The report states that in Venezuela, “Antisemitism is mainly promoted by the state and its various agencies” under the disputed leadership of President Nicolás Maduro. “Particularly, the anti-Israel policy, the close ties to Iran and its proxies, as well as the adoption of the Palestinian narrative, negatively affect the Jewish community because of the conflation between Israel, Zionism, and Judaism,” the report states.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “often equates Israel with Nazi Germany, while his adversaries use the term ‘Jew’ as a smear against him,” the report says. Anti-Semitism is manifested “increasingly in government officials’ statements” that portray “Jews as cruel killers,” the text reads.

In Ukraine, senior officials have spoken out against anti-Semitism, including former president Petro Poroshenko, the authors wrote. But “several anti-Semitic statements by officials were also recorded,” as well a city-approved march in Lviv featuring Nazi uniforms. Officials in Poland also resorted to anti-Semitic rhetoric.

“It is now clear that anti-Semitism is no longer limited to the far-left, far-right and radical Islamists triangle — it has become mainstream and often accepted by civil society,” he said.

Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry releases its report every year on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday at sundown. This year, the report comes just days after another fatal shooting attack Saturday against a synagogue in southern California. The attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue on the last day of Passover killed one woman and wounded three people, including the rabbi.

In addition to the shooting attacks, assaults and vandalism, Kantor also noted the increased anti-Semitic vitriol online and in newspapers, including a recent anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in The New York Times’ international edition. It depicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog wearing a Star of David collar and leading a blind and skullcap-wearing US President Donald Trump.

The Times has since apologized, calling the image “offensive” and vowing to refrain from publishing such bigoted cartoons again. Still, it sparked outrage among dozens of American Jewish groups that subsequently sent a letter calling on the newspaper to “become far more sensitive to anti-Semitism in the future.”

“Anti-Semitism has recently progressed to the point of calling into question the very continuation of Jewish life in many parts of the world. As we saw with the second mass shooting of a synagogue in the US, many parts of the world that were previously thought of as safe no longer are,” Kantor added.

“Anti-Semitism has entered gradually into the public discourse,” he said.

The ascendancy of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has also contributed to a growing sense of fear among Britain’s Jewish community. Critics say Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israel, has long allowed anti-Jewish prejudice to go unchecked. Corbyn’s supporters have been accused of sharing Holocaust denial and international Jewish banking conspiracies on social media. Several members of the party have quit it in protest.

Similarly, the inclusion of anti-Semitic activists in the Yellow Vests protests in France have raised greater concerns in a country in which anti-Semitic acts already account for half of all its documented hate crimes.

Kantor added that there has been an improvement in cooperation between Jewish communities and law enforcement agencies in Europe, and several European governments have taken strong steps as well, including fully adopting the working definition of anti-Semitism as outlined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The report says there has been a growing awareness of the threat among government agencies responsible for the well-being and security of their Jewish citizens.

Israel has also taken steps, hosting a global forum to combat anti-Semitism, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial has reported wide participation in its online course on the origins of anti-Semitism. Netanyahu said following the attack in southern California he would be convening a special meeting over the rising anti-Semitic attacks worldwide.

A Tale of Jewish Valor By Tzvi Fishman Arutz Sheva, May 2, 2019 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23806

When speaking about the Holocaust, one doesn’t immediately think of the Jews of Russia, but they were victims of Nazi atrocities. In fact, it was his encounter with the horrors of the Holocaust, as a young assimilated Russian student, which sparked Yosef Mendelevich’s decision to become a fighter for the freedom of Soviet Jewry.

Just a hundred years ago, Russia was the center of world Jewry, with many great yeshivot and famous Torah Gedolim. But under a cruel Communist dictatorship which was determined to eradicate Judaism, Torah learning was banned, and Torah scrolls were burnt, along with tefillin, prayer books, and holy Jewish texts. Synagogues and yeshivot were closed. Any Jew caught observing the Torah’s holidays and commandments could be imprisoned for years.

Jews lived in fear of the KGB, Russia’s secret police, which had undercover agents and informers everywhere. Within a generation, the Torah was nearly forgotten. Only the most dedicated and daring continued to learn from books they had hidden, at the risk of severe punishment. Jews who wanted to immigrate to the Jewish homeland were denied permission to leave Russia. For them, darkness spread over their lives, as deep as the darkness of Egypt.

Among the six-million Jews who lived in Russia, there arose a small Jewish underground resistance. They met clandestinely to learn about Jewish Tradition, the Land of Israel, and how to speak Hebrew. A small group even tried to hijack an airplane and escape to the State of Israel. They were arrested on the runway and brought to trial in Leningrad.

News of their plight spread through the Jewish world, igniting the “Struggle to Free Soviet Jewry.” Yosef Mendelevich was sentenced to twelve years in prison. His incredible dedication to Torah, under the harshest conditions, and his unwavering dream of reaching the Land of Israel, even when he was thrown into solitary confinement for weeks on end in a tiny, cold cell in the Gulag, at the furthest ends of Siberia, is one of the most heroic stories of our times.

In several occasions, he conducted long hunger strikes to protest his not being allowed to wear a kippah, study Torah and to keep its commandments. Today, he teaches at the Machon Meir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. His new book, “A Hero of Jewish Freedom,” translated by David Herman, recounts many of his ordeals in a reader- friendly fashion certain to strengthen everyone’s faith.(The book is also available here.)

What ignited your activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry?

I had just started high school in Riga when a friend dragged me along with him to clean up the Rumbuli Cemetery where some fifty-thousand Jews slaughtered by the Nazis were buried in several mass graves, including one for children. The victims had been murdered in the month of November, 1941. The area had been neglected by the Russian authorities, who refused permission to put up a sign commemorating the site as the burial place of Jewish victims.

I was surprised to see that a crowd of Jews were already at work with shovels and rakes, building a rudimentary monument to the dead. I had learned a few things, here and there, about Jewish history and Zionism, but it was here, at the very place that Amalek sought to destroy us, that my nationalist Jewish awakening crystalized. All at once, that very day?

My feelings matured and deepened over time, but the lightning bolt from Heaven was here. I volunteered to be a worker at the site, where the work of creating a memorial park continued. On Sundays, Jewish activists would gather at the cemetery, which we called, “Little Israel.” Singing Israeli songs, it was my initial experience with the feeling of brotherhood and pride in being Jewish.

Continuing to sing Hebrew songs on the bus back to the city, we caused other passengers to flee in fear that they would be associated with a group of proud Jews. In our unity, we all discovered a reservoir of valor and strength.

One Hannukah, at the Rumbuli Cemetery memorial service in 1965, we discussed the need not only to remember the dead, but to take concrete action to ensure the survival of Judaism and the Jews. In the freezing cold Russian night, after lighting the Hanukah candles and reciting Kaddish, I spoke about our obligation to the dead to carry on the flame of Jewish life and freedom. From that moment, I made an inner commitment to determine the course of my life for myself, and for the Jewish People, rather than allowing my actions and beliefs to be determined by others.

Afterward, the main group of activists gathered at my home. “Our fate is in our hands,” I declared. “We must act to resist the forces of assimilation and oppression, and emigrate to Israel. I propose that we establish an underground Zionist organization. All those in favor, raise your hands.”

You were raised in a secular home. How did you become so determined to keep the Torah?

The KGB learned of our plans to hijack an airplane to Israel. When we reached the airport, they were waiting for us. Before our trial, my interrogators tried to convince me to squeal on other Jews in the Jewish Underground Movement, whereupon they could be arrested as traitors to the Soviet regime. Of course, I refused.

‘Mendelevich, don’t be a fool,’ the investigator told me. ‘You are still a young man. You have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t throw it away. Give us the names of the other members of your group, admit that you made a mistake in betraying your Motherland, and we will lighten your sentence. Otherwise, you may be sentenced to spend the rest of your life in prison, or even be executed.’

I kept silent, unwilling to betray fellow Jews.

‘You are a Russian,’ the investigator continued. ‘You were educated as a Russian. Give up your foolish insistence on being a Jew and on immigrating to Israel. There is no G-d. Your Torah is just a make-believe fairytale that no enlightened Russian can accept, and you will only suffer for your stubborn rebellion.’

‘I am a Jew, and I am proud to be Jewish,’ I answered, not flinching from the look of hate in his eyes. ‘It is true that I was born in Russia, but my Motherland is Israel. And the laws of the Torah are the laws that I must follow, not the unjust and immoral laws of the Soviet State.’

The interrogator growled and sent me back to my cell. I felt a great turmoil inside of me, enraged that the Russian authorities were trying to strip me of my Jewish identity. I sensed that I must hang on to my Jewishness at all costs. If not, they would succeed in breaking me, and turning me into a traitor to my friends and to the Jewish People.

But, I had a problem which seemed even more insurmountable than the bars of my cell, the hostile interrogators, the uncaring guards, and the frightening dogs that patrolled the perimeters of the exercise yards. I knew very little about Judaism - just things that I had gleaned from our underground meetings. Confronted with beatings and arrests, Jews were afraid to act like Jews. But here and there, I had learned some things from my father and uncle. There were no Sabbath candles at home, the holidays came and passed with little celebration, and I hardly knew how to pray, or to Whom I was praying to. But now, in defiance of my prison captors and the evil Soviet government that wanted to stamp out the faith of our People, I understood that I had to act like a Jew in every way that I could, just like Jews had throughout history, from generation to generation, in defiance of endless persecution, from the time of our slavery in Egypt, up to the bondage of my brothers and sisters in Russia, decent peace-loving people who were treated as criminals if they wanted to keep the Torah and return to their own Jewish Homeland in Israel.

Didn’t your family celebrate Pesach when you were young?

Not for most of my childhood. My father wasn’t a believer. Even though he was a steadfast Communist, he was arrested for being a Jew and imprisoned for two years. My mother died of heartbreak. When my father returned and Pesach arrived, he decided to hold the rudiments of a Seder. He said he had attending a few Seder Nights at the home of my mother’s parents in the early years of their marriage.

We didn’t have a Haggadah, so he told us about Jewish History from the time of Avraham, through the Exodus from Egypt, until the establishment of the State of Israel. This was my father’s way of observing the mitzvah, “And you shall teach your children.” All of the saga was a big revelation for me. Growing up, I knew nothing about Judaism or Jewish History.

Let’s jump forward to your own personal Exodus and freedom after eleven years in Siberian work camps and prisons. How did it transpire?

After prison authorities confiscated my Chumash and Siddur, I went on a hunger strike for 55 days until they returned the books to me. After recovering in what was called a medical clinic, I was sent back to the prison factory, hauling coils of heavy wire weighing 60 kilos. At the end of one work day, two officials appeared in the barracks and told me to pack my belongings because I was being transferred. Handcuffed, I was driven away in a jeep through a dark forest, squeezed between an armed KGB agent and a huge guard dog, panting as if it couldn’t wait to get a taste of my bones.

No one bothered to explain where we were headed. I was confident they wouldn’t kill me because my struggle had become well known in the West. I figured I was going to be interrogated as a disobedient political prisoner. After a long train ride and an almost equally long airplane flight, I was driven to some prison and left alone in a cell. After a nervous two weeks, I was once again told to pack my belongings.

This time I was led to a large office in the prison where a small squadron of KGB captains and generals were sitting. One held up a large piece of paper and read aloud: ‘Decision of the Supreme Soviet Council. In light of the criminal and anti-Soviet behavior of the exceedingly dangerous prisoner, Yosef Mendelevich, the Supreme Soviet Council has decided to cancel the criminal’s Soviet citizenship and to expel him from the boundaries of the Soviet Union.’

After a startled moment, I exclaimed, ‘Baruch Hashem.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I thanked G-d for the miracle he has done for me,’ I replied.

‘Swine!’ he shouted. ‘He is expelled from his homeland and he is happy!’

‘Russia is not my homeland. The opposite,’ I told them. “You are expelling me from a foreign land to the Homeland of my People.’ When I left the room, my handcuffs were removed, and I was driven to the airport with an escort of motorcycles like an important person. I felt like Yosef in Egypt who was taken from prison, dressed in clean garb, and brought before the king. Before boarding the airplane,

I said to the KGB commander, ‘Eleven years ago, the KGB arrested me on an airport runway to prevent me from leaving for Israel. Now you have brought me to this airport to make sure I depart. And tens of thousands like me will follow. You should admit that you made a mistake.’

‘We didn’t know you people have such unbreakable spirit and resolve,’ he said.

Agents led me to the airplane before I could answer, not that he would have understood what I wanted to tell him. It wasn’t only the spirit of the Prisoners of Zion, and the resolve of the people throughout the Free World who supported our struggle, that brought down the Iron Curtain.

Just like in the Exodus from Egypt, the power came from our Father in Heaven and from clinging to His Torah.

Two European Politicians Made A ‘White Power’ Sign As They Were Sworn in As Government Ministers By Alberto Nardelli Buzzfeed News, April 30, 2019 https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/estonia-white-power-sign-martin-helme-mart-helme

Two ministers in Estonia’s new coalition government made a hand gesture interpreted as a symbol for “white power” during a swearing-in ceremony.

Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves tweeted a picture of Mart Helme and his son Martin on Monday, after they were sworn in as the country’s interior minister and finance minister respectively.

Mart and Martin Helme are from the far-right nationalist Estonian Conservative People's party (EKRE). The party, led by Mart Helme, claims to defend the interests of ethnic Estonians. It has adopted a fierce anti-LGBT and anti-migrant rhetoric and platform.

In last month’s Estonian election, EKRE won nearly 18% of the vote, making it the third largest political party in the Baltic country, which is a member of the European Union.

The father and son have a history of making racist comments. In 2013, Martin Helme, 43, tolda talk show, "I want Estonia to be a white country.”

Earlier this year, Mart Helme, 69, wrote in an opinion piece that “indigenous people are [being] replaced by Slavs and negroes.” Helme is Estonia’s former ambassador to Russia.

A photo gallery on the website of the Estonian public broadcaster ERR shows Martin Helme appearing to make the white power sign twice, in the corridors of parliament, and again in the chamber during the ceremony.

The broadcaster said that sign was “either a far-right signal or a ’dog whistle’ gesture aimed at the party's opponents.”

Footage of the swearing-in ceremony was also posted online by Estonia’s parliament, the Riigikogu.

A diplomatic source suggested the use of the sign was most probably not accidental given the ministers’ politics. The hand gesture, which began as a sarcastic meme, is associated with white supremacists around the world. It was also used by the terrorist in the Christchurch attack, who killed 50 people in March in New Zealand, when he appeared in court last month

Sweden’s former prime minister, Carl Bildt, called the gesture “genuinely worrying.”

During Monday’s ceremony, Estonia’s President Kersti Kaljulaid wore a sweater with the words ''Sõna on vaba,'' which translates as ''speech is free.''

President Kaljulaid left the chamber when it was the turn of another EKRE minister, Marti Kuusik, to take his oath, ERR reported. Allegations of domestic abuse have been made against Kuusik, the incoming IT minister.

Estonia’s new coalition government comprises Prime Minister Jüri Ratas's Center Party, EKRE, and the conservative Pro Patria (Fatherland) party. The three parties hold five cabinet posts each.

Ratas's party was a distant second to the liberal Estonian Reform Party in last month’s election, but took the controversial decision to enter into talks with EKRE, turning down an offer to form a coalition with Reform.

The Estonian government has been approached for comment.

Holocaust Survivor Edward Mosberg To Be Awarded Poland’s Highest Honor By Ilanit Chernick The Jerusalem Post, May 2, 2019 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Holocaust-survivor-Edward-Mosberg-to-be-awarded-Polands-highest- honor-588278

Polish President Andrzej Duda will award Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg, 93, with the Order of Merit, his country’s highest civilian distinction, From the Depths has announced.

The medal will be awarded Wednesday in Krakow, the philanthropist and educator’s birthplace.

Returning to the city where he was born to “receive such a decoration is an amazingly moving event for me,” Mosberg said.

“I accept this award on behalf of myself, my wife, my children and grandchildren, and most importantly, in honor of my mother, father, siblings and six million Jews, brutally murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust,” he continued.

“It is important that those who come after us are our witnesses and be sure that the tragedy of the Holocaust will never be forgotten.” Mosberg added that he was also “dedicating the distinction to those who gave away and risked their lives to save Jews during the war, like the Ulma family from Markowa, and hoping for better relations between the Jewish and Polish people.”

From the Depths is a nonprofit organization whose aim is to build a shared future between Poles and Jews.

The foundation cooperates with survivors from the Holocaust and with Jewish communities from around the world, especially from Eastern Europe.

For decades, Mosberg has contributed to the deepening of the dialogue between Jews and Poles, and tirelessly worked to promote education about the Holocaust around the world.

“He is one of the last living survivors of Płaszów and Mauthausen,” explained Lena Klaudel, From the Depths Eastern Europe Office director.

When World War II broke out, Mosberg was 13 years old. In 1941, his family was sent to the ghetto in Krakow.

In 1943, the ghetto was liquidated, and his mother went to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Mosberg and his siblings were sent to Płaszów, and from there to numerous German Nazi concentration camps, including Mauthausen, Klaudel explained.

Infected with tuberculosis, he spent many months in an Italian sanatorium following the war. In spite of everything, “the 19-year-old swore to live a full life again [and] he made contact with Cesia Storch, a young woman from Krakow imprisoned in the camp barracks with his sisters. With a Gr. 7 education and $10 in his pocket, Edward arrived in New York City in 1951 with his new fiancée, living in Harlem with their 18-month-old daughter.”

Mosberg simultaneously worked three jobs, including suturing pocketbooks, earning 50¢ an hour, before becoming a successful property developer. Today, he speaks throughout the world about his personal experiences in the Holocaust, participates every year in the March of the Living and works closely with the Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, the From the Depths Foundation and other organizations that preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

Edward and Cesia have three daughters and six grandchildren, and reside in New Jersey.

We Are Here Because the Bielski Brothers Fought Back By Tamara Vershitskaya and Leslie Bell Times of Israel, May 1, 2019 https://www.timesofisrael.com/we-are-here-because-the-bielski-partisans-fought-back/

Novogrudok is a small city in the rolling hills of western Belarus, surrounded by lush forests full of lakes and streams, with wolves, bears, wild boars and bison prowling around the trees. Once the hunting grounds of European aristocrats, the area was also an important and well-known center of Jews since the 15th century.

From Belarus came three presidents of Israel — Chaim Weizmann, Zalman Shazar, and Shimon Peres — and three prime ministers — Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. From Novogrudok and its surrounding region also came the largest detachment of Jewish fighters in German-occupied Europe during World War II.

David Bielski and his younger brother Zelig were born in a rural Belarusian village, part of tsarist Russia towards the end of the 19th century. Their paths diverged in the beginning of the 20th century when Zelig moved to Novogrudok. However, they found themselves together again when, in the freezing winter of 1942, they were forced to undress with their families and hundreds of fellow Jews, and machine-gunned into pre-dug ditches by Nazi extermination, supported by enthusiastic Lithuanian collaborators.

About 4,000 Jews from the city and its surrounding area were killed in that first day’s slaughter.

The children of David and Zelig were proud of their Jewish heritage and did not believe in turning the other cheek when confronted by anti-Semitism. Their sons, tall and strong, knew how to use their fists; they settled scores. Woe unto any local who harmed their family or ridiculed their religion.

David’s son, Tuvia, would later become the well-known and charismatic commander of the Bielski Partisans. Zelig’s son, Yehuda, or Yudel, would go on to organize and coordinate the military wing of the Bielski detachment. The Bielski Partisans became one of the most successful and impressive rescue operations during the Holocaust. Their story was told in the Oscar-nominated 2008 movie, Defiance.

From 1921 to 1939 about half of Belarus was controlled by Poland and Tuvia was drafted into the Polish army. Two years later Corporal Bielski returned home, got a job as an assistant bookkeeper and married. Several years later, Yehuda was also drafted into the Polish army and was commissioned as a lieutenant. After returning to Novogrudok, he became a school athletics coach and married. He was a quiet, very private man.

The army called up Yehuda when Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. Badly wounded in battle, he escaped from a Warsaw hospital when the SS stormed in looking for officers and Jews. He maneuvered his way home where the Soviets were now in control.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. When the Germans reached Novogrudok, Yehuda found himself on the ghetto selection line to the massacre pits. After a second selection, he planned an escape.

Just then he received a letter from his older cousin, Tuvia, delivered by their Christian friend. “We are hiding in the forest and do not plan to submit to the Germans. Bring your wife, a few good men and we will build something together,” Tuvia wrote. He had recently escaped with 20 family members (including his three brothers) from a village he was hiding in. He needed Yehuda’s military expertise.

One night, leading his wife and eight potential fighters, Yehuda advanced slowly while avoiding the guards to the ghetto fence where they removed the fence boards, cut through the barbed wire and escaped across an open field to the forest. When they finally reached his cousins, Yehuda addressed the group: “We have come here to stay alive. We must think only of one important thing, revenge and revenge again on the murderers.” Acquiring weapons and attacking the enemy was his answer.

With Tuvia’s authoritative leadership and Yehuda’s military focus, the Bielski Partisans emerged. It now included people who were not relatives.

Tuvia and his brothers, Asael and Zus, organized the Bielski detachment. Their 13-year-old brother, Aron, was a forest scout. Tuvia accepted and protected desperate Jews of all ages, and created a family partisan camp. “Because we are so few, it is important for me that the Jews stay alive” he said.

The grandmother of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was among those who joined the Bielski partisans after escaping from the Novogrudok ghetto. By the autumn of 1943 there were 750 people in the partisan camp, which became known as “Forest Jerusalem.’’ Satellite camps were added.

Several dozen underground bunkers were built in the main camp. The largest could house about 40 people. In the center were the headquarters and meeting place. It included assorted workshops, a mill, bathhouse, laundry, synagogue, school, infirmary, and jail.

Some extraordinary Belarusians, at enormous risk to themselves and their families, helped Jews escape from ghettos and tunnels. The Germans brutally killed the families of those who helped Jews. In Jerusalem, 711 Belarusians are honored and memorialized at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

The military wing proved to be extremely effective guerrilla fighters and saboteurs. Aided by their Belarusian friends, they acquired ammunition and equipment. They captured German weapons and uniforms. They received many more weapons and equipment from the Soviets.

According to the Russian archives, the Bielski partisan fighters derailed German trains with manpower and equipment, blew up rail and highway bridges including hundreds of meters of tracks plus German vehicles. They assassinated hundreds of German soldiers and officers, the collaborating Belarusian auxiliary police, and local farmers who identified and killed Jews.

Yehuda’s life was always in peril. Stalin had ordered that all Polish officers be shot on sight. There were Moscow-led detachments and NKVD secret police partisan units fighting in the forest. But Tuvia had a friendly working relationship with several Soviet commanders and protected his cousin. Yehuda eluded the Russians and acquired a moniker: “the mystery man.”

Tragically, both Tuvia’s wife and Yehuda’s wife were killed in a German ambush. In time, Tuvia and Lilka, his wife’s relative, became a couple. Yehuda befriended Lola who had escaped from Poland and joined the Bielski detachment, her fourth partisan group.

Liberated in the summer of 1944 by the Red army on its way to victory in Germany, approximately 1,230 men, women and children in the Bielski detachment walked out of the forest. Today they have over 25,000 descendants worldwide.

Tuvia married Lilka and Zus married Sonia, a fellow partisan. Asael was killed. Yehuda and Lola married. The Bielskis made their way to Palestine. Yehuda was commissioned a lieutenant in the IDF and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. Again, he was wounded in battle. Tuvia and Zus also participated in the war, and on May 14, 1948 Israel was reborn.

In the 1950’s the Bielski families immigrated to America where they were reunited with their siblings whom they had not seen in over 30 years.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from the barbaric German invaders. Belarus had the largest partisan (374,000) and anti-Nazi underground movement (70,000) in Europe during World War II. Loss of life was in the millions. Over 800,000 Jews were killed in a Holocaust by bullets.

Dozens of descendants of the Bielski Partisans will be coming to Novogrudok this summer to honor the legacy and heroism of their families, and of the non-Jews who hid and helped them. They will be warmly welcomed with celebrations and festivities, a long way from the spartan version of Forest Jerusalem that they built three- quarters of a century ago.